In this Final Phase of the Course, I was at a point where I felt really confident in my writing, and also I felt like my work was worth more than what I would originally think. From starting off doing a WLLN where I got to express myself more freely than ever, to then doing a research essay which involves a more linear and strict set of rules that have to be followed, thanks to the encouragements and reminders by our professor to be as creative as we wanted and as expressive as we wanted. It was during this phase that I was able to truly appreciate myself and my abilities as a reader and as a writer.

During this course, I had many moments in which I felt like what I was doing really came out from the heart. While there were also many times that the work that I was doing truly felt like a college experience, In the end, it all seemed to like something I have seen before since in highschool I took AP courses,  I took AP Seminar, and also AP English Composition, both really improving my writing skills, so in the end, I am very used to doing college level essays and doing college-level stuff, except that now this was the real deal. However, one specific example during my freshman year in college where I felt challenged, was during the language and literacy narrative. It was something that I never did before, especially given the fact that I had to break away from my typical essay format and convert it more into a story. It was a story that required my creativity, yet however I was not used tro being able to freely express myself in an essay since I would have to do things in a certain format, so it required me to use a part of my brain that for a very long time felt like it was being suppressed in exchange for assimilating to certain specific style. Another moment that felt challenging was trying to keep up with all the essay outlines. Given that sometimes we would have a week or sometimes a couple of days, I would end up leaving the work for last and as a result I would end up procrastinating and sometimes not doing the work at all. Yet there were also fulfilling moments such as when I was first able to present and I got praise for my writing and I even got told by my professor that I am a great writer. It was something that really helped me with my confidence in my writing skills. 

There were many things that I learnt while doing the essays and all the coursework, and one of the most important things that I learnt Is that there is no perfect English in which me could say that is the only English. Because of this, over the semester I have felt more free to write in however way I wanted, since there wasn’t really any strict limitation like there was when I was doing my essays in high school or even in my current philosophy class. Another great thing that I’ve learned over the semester in Ethos Pathos and Logos. Although I have heard of it before in my high school career, it didn’t really get stuck with me, but it truly stayed with me now that I we relearned it and we got to use examples and apply one of the three, so now I know the difference between Pathos and Logos and Ethos. Additionally, there were also some skills that I improved upon, such as synthesizing. Before I had no idea what synthesizing was since I haven’t touched upon that topic since I was a sophomore in high school, but when we got back into it and we started doing examples such as with the texts we read at the beginning of the year, I became much better at synthesizing since I was able to learn the idea of synthesizing and having to connect two texts into the same main idea or even comparing their ideas with each other. 

If I were to compare my learning experiences in anything that we have learned over the course of the entire semester to the course learning outcomes, it would be the first one, “Examine How attitudes towards linguistic standards empower and oppress language users.”, since the text such as Amy Tan’s and June Jordan’s have proven that a different type of English other than the American perfect one. And as I read the texts, it really hit me home since I myself had my own unique type of English with my own pronunciation. Additionally, I also can relate to the second, “explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations”  In which I can say that I have explored a lot of genres throughout this semester, from simple essays, to speeches and TED talks, Which has really taught me a lot over the semester, third, “ develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing” also because Indeed I have really learned to draft and revise really well since before I used to just mash words into the paper without making sense, but now I have disciplined myself more into a more focused and linear type of drafting in which makes it really easier for me , fourth “recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations”  because of the fact that I have always struggled with rhetorical strategies since I have never really understood the idea of rhetorical writing, yet over this semester I was able to really learn a lot in that time and now I am very good at doing rhetorical analysis, and sixth outcome “locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the libraries databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias” in that I have been able to master the ability to search for good sources and databases and since now I have a big tool at my disposal, now I can really do weel with my essays, which all talk about writing strategies and researching, in which I have really improved upon over the years.